Papacy power in Middle Ages not a Fable as Revelation 13 depicted

 

Principle Source

Ascheri, M. (2018). The Princeps in Late Medieval Legal Texts. In Italicità

collana diretta da Piero Bassetti, Fabio Finotti, Gilberto Pizzamiglio 3. I VOLTI DEL PRINCIPE.indd 1 18/12/17 11.44. Collana del Center for Italian Studies dell’Università di Pennsylvania. Venice: Marsilio Editori, Gennaio.

 

12th century Jurists wrote extensively of the powers of the Papacy and the King.

What happened is that the papacy was vicarius fili dei on earth for heavenly matters and the king was vicarius fili dei on earth for earthly matters. This principle was already recognized strongly in the Justinian debates with popes around 533-538 CE. The abdication of politics by Justinian in 538 CE (see his coin removing military images replacing it with the emperor theologian in that year) was the start of the supremacy of the papacy because the earthly powers cannot usurp the exclusive powers of the papacy with heavenly matters. So they reasoned.

So definition back and forth of princeps was certainly entertained sporadic here and there with conflicts but it was in the 12th century that they discussed and defined the powers of both.

What the emperor had as power was conferred on the king, why, because the emperor was already under the umbrella of the papacy and thus any king should stand in the same shoes as the emperor to also be found under this papacy umbrella.

 

The power of the papacy was viewed high by Pope Innocent III in 1200 who deemed the pope as the verus imperator. Because the pope could claim he was the Vicarius filii dei or as Ashceri has it, the vicarius dei, he was seen as the true princeps rather than the kings (Ascheri 2018: 48).

 

 

From 1250 King Frederick II caused discussions on the role of natural law as opposed to sacred law and these discussions were under the umbrella of “rule of law” theorizings (Ascheri 2018: 49).  

 

After Frederick II’s death the principes of king was absent for many years so city states gained the power. Much were written on the power of the municipalities then.

 

Consequently Thomas Aquinas wrote on the Christian duties of both the principes and the principatus.

 

A scholar Marsilius wrote with positivism on the rule of law at that time. His writings were condemned by the church and papacy (Ascheri 2018: 50).

 

The principes of kings and emperors continued while pope Boniface VIII issued his papal Bull called Unam Sanctam which “reaffirmed the traditional papal principle of the ecclesiastical sovereignty termed as ‘hierocracy’” (Ascheri 2018: 50).

 

Thus he considered the principes as obligated to obey all Christian rules as established by the Holy See13. (Ascheri 2018 citing Di Paolo, 2008).

 

The work of Bartolus de Saxoferrato in 1357 became a beacon of a seesaw fight between the power of the king and that of the city people group that started in those days. Of course over all of them was the power of the papacy (Ascheri 2018: 52) “And the hierocratic notion, affording to the Pope as God’s vicar the primacy of all powers both temporal and spiritual, always prevailed above both.” Even today there are the row between nations and powers back and forth with differences but they all run to the papacy to acclaim his vicarius filii dei recognition. Even Trump who is Jewish inclined as President of the USA.

 

In 1383 John of Legnato wrote a work Somnium in which it was claimed that the French monarch is was the central vicarius dei (Archeri 2018: 53). Archeri considered the text “bizarre”. Considering who pays for Archeri his salary, one can expect this comment of his. It clash with the role of the papacy as vicarius filii dei to say that. It became known in French as the Songe du Vergier. “

“…the king alone was the center of the work, extolled as princeps vicarius Dei in temporalibus like the Emperor and, for that reason, invited to be careful that the Church not encroach upon his jurisdiction.”

This was in the French edition but in Legnato writing he said: “In the

writings of Legnano, however, the true and supreme princeps was the Pope who was to be assisted by the canonica sapientia and the civilis sapientia of jurists. The trouble with this was that it impeded the priests from assembling” (Ascheri 2018: 53). Legnato still kept the papacy as the true and supreme princeps and vicarius filii dei of heavenly matters reigned over everything else. This recognition is also currently the populist feeling of countries and nations and thus we have a healing of the deadly wound of Revelation 13, the first beast exactly this power at play in the description of Ascheri in the Middle Ages and the wound healed as the current worldly display of recognition, even five USA presidents at the funeral of pope John Paul II.

 

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